"As it is often the case with other inhabitants of great cities, Keats described nature as she appeared to his fancies, and not as he would have described her, had he witnessed the things he described." - On Keats
"Ah! What a paradise begins with life, and what a wilderness the knowledge of the world discloses. Surely the garden of Eden was nothing more than our first parents entrance upon life, and the loss of it their knowledge of the world."
- autobiographical fragment
"So, here I am, homeless at home, and half gratified to feel that I can be happy anywhere."
- Shortly before being committed to Northamptonshire County Asylum
"I once had something to do with poetry, a long while ago; but it was no good."
- Near the end of his life
"Here sleep the hopes of one whose glowing birth Was found too warm for this unfeeling earth"
- The epitaph he wrote for himself - which was not used. Instead his grave bears the words: Sacred to the memory of John Clare, the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet. Poeta Nascitur, non fit.
"In such a beautiful wilderness of wild flowers we are amused with the very variety and novelty of the scene so much that we in our pleasure lose all sense of weariness or fatigue in the length of our wanderings and get to the end before we are aware of our journey."
